Emerging Technologies

Interactonia Balloon

The purpose of this study is the realization of the method to evoke emotion in engineering. In the field of cognitive science, the phenomenon is known that recognizing of the change of the body response arouses a feeling. Also in the field of somatopsychology, a feeling of tension and freedom are known to relate closely with respiratory condition from recent researches.
Based on the knowledge, we propose a system as artwork named “Interactonia Balloon,” which let people arouse a feeling of tension and release by changing respiratory status consciously. The balloon visualizes the feeling and inflates when the person gets nervous by measuring respiratory condition of people. Also the balloon transmits the nervousness to other people who sharing a space with the person. The more inflation of balloon makes the person and people with their feel further tense. Then, the tension of other people increases and communicated to the person. Put simply, the feeling of tension of a person and other people are amplified interactively. Also the balloon deflates when the person released from the strain, and it let persons sharing space the person from the increased strain.
The work reveals that not only that feeling of tension causes changing in a body response, but also that feeling of tension is aroused by the body response consciously. Also the work demonstrated that sharing of the feeling of tension or freedom of people provides pleasant to them with a paradoxical experience.